15
Conclusion
Polkinghornes choice of a cosmological approach to natural theology drives his theological output and
necessarily limits it. Therefore, he cannot accept a literalistic or temporally based interpretation of the Genesis
accounts of creation as being faithful to scientific insight and evidence. The part played by these accounts is to point
beyond science and the innate abilities and potentialities of the universe to create itself to the one who gave it these
abilities. Therefore, the Genesis accounts are able to draw an ontological picture of Gods involvement, but are not
to be understood as being scientifically valid. Further, the universe was not predetermined or preformed. Thus one
cannot scientifically read a design argument from the Genesis accounts. Polkinghorne, therefore, does not consider the
ontological or design arguments to be scientific in nature. This does not mean that he does not find ontological or
teleological arguments present in the text of Scripture, but rather that he excludes them from scientific discussion and thus
they are not the basis for his hermeneutic when speaking of the origin of the cosmos.
Additionally, Polkinghorne does not consider the question of sin (Gen 3)
69
as playing a role in the presence of
cosmic suffering or to be the reason for the cosmoss eventual destruction and recreation. Such a view would destroy his
scientifically based hermeneutic in which God-directed evolutionary processes are allowed to prevent God from
ultimately being responsible for unnecessary suffering and thus detract from his benevolence. Further, his view allows
God to be simultaneously determinative and nondeterminative, allowing the cosmos to share in this present creation in
the process of making itself, but redeeming it from its blundering ways in the second by bringing it to successful fruition
without the evolutionary process. Polkinghorne notes that "though the new creation is the transform of the old creation,
the distinction between the two must be as sharp as that between death and resurrection."
70
However, when speaking of eschatology, Polkinghorne looks first to Scripture. Here theology describes
what it can about the new creation, while science fulfills a more modest role in clarifying what will be the necessary
degree of continuity between the old and new creations required for the scriptural prediction of a coming eschaton.
71
69
Science and Creation.
70
The God of Hope and the End of the World, 141.
71
Ibid., 12-13.